Nick Kolakowski has written for The Washington Post, Slashdot, eWeek, McSweeney's, Thrillist, WebMD, Trader Monthly, and other venues. He's also the author of "A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps," a noir thriller.

Now that Donald Trump is President-elect of the United States, many in the tech community are wondering what changes (if any) will come to the H-1B program.

For those not in the know, H-1B visas allow American firms to hire workers from other countries, provided those workers are paid the same salary that a U.S.-based hire would have earned. The program is a lottery system, and there is a hard cap on the number of workers that companies can hire every year.

Executives who rely on the H-1B program claim it allows them to hire workers with specialized skillsets they wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise. Critics complain that the system allows companies to overlook perfectly capable American workers in favor of foreign ones who cost less.

Tech companies have periodically lobbied Congress to raise the H-1B cap. Various legislators have spent years attempting to close what they claim are loopholes that allow companies to hire cheaper labor without first attempting to recruit within the U.S. While that back-and-forth between program supporters and detractors has gone on for quite some time, the issue came to the forefront during this year’s Presidential campaign, when both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton commented on it.

Specifically, Clinton expressed support for workers who found themselves replaced by foreign workers as a “cost-cutting measure.” That expression of sympathy aside, her platform made no mention of reforming the H-1B system, although it did feature a subsection about streamlining the visa process for STEM graduates.

Trump, on the other hand, took a much more aggressive stance on H-1Bs. “I know the H-1B very well,” he said during a Republican debate earlier this year. “We shouldn’t have it, it’s very, very bad for workers. It’s unfair to our workers and we should end it.”

But campaigning isn’t governing, and now Trump faces a series of stark choices (they don’t call the U.S. Presidency the hardest job in the world for nothing). Actually ending the H-1B program will likely spark an enormous backlash from the tech industry. If he does nothing to reform the country’s visa system, however, he risks alienating some of his core supporters.

Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is a longtime critic of the H-1B system in its current form. “We shouldn’t be bringing in people where we’ve got workers,” Sessions told an audience during a campaign event earlier this year, according to The Des Moines Register. “There are a number of ways to fix it.”

Sessions wants to restrict the number and types of companies that can use the H-1B programs. Last year, he also proposed replacing the existing lottery system with one that doled out H-1Bs for only high-paying jobs—a move that, in theory, would eliminate any company’s reliance on the visa as a way to secure cheap contractors.

If confirmed as Attorney General, Sessions would possibly investigate companies’ H-1B use; he previously petitioned Eric Holder, the former Attorney General under President Obama, to do that very thing.

The ultimate decisions about the country’s visa program rest with Trump. If he follows Sessions’ advice, we could see the H-1B program tighten up in coming years, provided that Congress also follows his lead. But at this point, it remains uncertain what exactly the President-elect will do.

So far nothing was done, just promises. I voted for Mr. Trump 100% based on his promise to do something about H1B visa.
Remains to be seen if will be also bought as the others by big corporations and become one like the others “all talk, no actions”.

I hope Trump will be able to something about are jobs going over seas. I graduated with Computer Science degree 7 months ago and I’ve been looking for a job every since. All my Indian friends are having no problems finding work. All of them have h1b visas and most of them I’ve tutored. It’s extremely frustrating when I’m interviewing with a Indian manager and his accent is so thick I can understand what he saying. I’m blown away at the fact he is a manager at a large bank with communications skills. I did not understand Trumps appeal until I looking for work and seeing how the stack is against the American IT worker. I hope he’s able to do something about the h1b visa problem shutting out American workers.

I don’t. know what is the point. I’m searching for a job as a developer for the last 6 month, every job that I applied around 50 to 60 people apply for the same position (LinkedIn) and the companies are not that famous, actually most are unknown. When they invite me for interview (rare), they are interviewing 10 to 15 people for one position. Salary (30$/hr). Yes it is Silicon Valley. So where is the lask of developers? . What is the real need of H1B?.

I don’t know if the article intended to deceive, but there is another component to the H1-B visa program. Companies can bring in foreign workers ONLY if they are unable find a qualified American worker.

This is why the wholesale replacement of existing workers is a mockery of the program. Disney and Harley-Davidson already HAD qualified American workers doing the job, but fired them in favor of H1-B workers.

I am a graduate of one of the STEM programs specifically in web development. The entire reason I went into the tech field was in hopes that I would be employed after graduating. I went back to school because I was not able to get a job. My lack of experience is what I am told. By eliminating the H1B visa could potentially be a good thing for people like me that need and want a job in tech.

I totally agree with James Brown. Let me share that I came here from a foreign country, finished my Masters and got onto a H1-B and then a Green Card and Citizenship. Today I see body shoppers like TCS, Cognizant, Wipro and a plethora of small so called ‘Consultancies’ that are mini versions of these behemoths like TCS etc in the USA itself that basically feed off the H1-B. They ship engineers with 5-8 years of experience with or without Master’s degrees direct to the USA to compete with our own graduates who struggle for opportunities. Head to Connecticut, New Jersey, San Jose and you will see hordes of these engineers who have basically completely displaced American engineers. Tech companies no longer want to hire American educated Engineers because they are entry level and need training. It is easier to simply ship an experienced H1-B direct from India to here. If we are serious about giving our own kids an opportunity then we should stop the greed of these Tech companies and toss the H1-B program in the trash. Those who are here on H1-Bs need to be asked to train our American kids and then asked to go home. Please understand that Tech companies like Google, IBM and Microsoft liberally use ‘double dipping’. Not only have they moved thousands of jobs to Bangalore and Hyderabad but they are also using this H1-B train to replace local workers. All this is done under the guide of ‘We cannot find people’. This is complete balderdash. What they mean is, ‘We cannot find people we do not need to train’. It is time we as a society confronted this kind of corporate greed and ended it.

For each H-1B a company hires, a tax penalty should be applied on both the company and the individual. If a recruiting company is involved in the process, they should also receive a tax penalty.
These penalties should double each year the individual is employees anywhere in the great USA.

I am one of those workers who lost my job because an H1-B visa holder was paid less than I was making. So, that program should be phased out. There are lots of qualified and specialized tech workers here in the US.

100 percent agree with first comment. Just look at the rising percentage of workers from India in our tech departments. Don’t tell me they are all here because companies can’t find American workers. I sincerely hope Jeff Sessions pulls the plug on this boondoggle. It’s pleasant to see some companies now starting to advertise for jobs saying “Must be a US citizen”.

My core response is we are far too overpopulated as it is and need to be very selective about who we let come in. If the need for a foreigner is because they have some specific skill or training that Is lacking here, it would be better to spend money training a domestic at no cost to them to get that training than to shoulder the cost and burden of adding to the population. A more heinous unethical practice is the one followed by HP of reducing headcount under the guise of a “layoff” while moving those jobs offshore. In their 2012 reduction program they specifically state in their agreement with the displaced worker that they will not be reconsidered for rehire. This is counter to the traditional meaning of a layoff that the reason for reducing headcount is due to lack of work and if the work returns the displaced employee will get first consideration for rehire. Not so with HP. As soon as the old worker is out their job gets posted overseas. The legality of this is very questionable. no wonder Meg Whitman was supporting Hillary. If this is brought to the attention of the new administration maybe some justice can be served.

H-1Bs are a necessary evil. They are intended to allow US employers to fill positions for which nobody already legally in the US has the right skills. And workers on an H-1B need to be paid at least the prevailing wages.

As with so many laws, the law isn’t enforced. Thus, people are brought in who have no special skills; that is, no skills that aren’t already available. And people are brought in on compensation that isn’t near the prevailing wage.

If the H-1B program needs to remain (and I agree with many tech companies that it should), then verification of meeting the requirements is a must. Violators of these requirements must be punished harshly. A worker entering on an H1-B obtained under false pretenses should be considered an illegal alien and treated as such. And companies using H-1Bs while violating the letter and intent of the law should incur fines of multiple time the salary paid to the worker.

Yes. H1-B program has to be banned for few years. I was unemployed by one of the big 4 firms and many were on bench or lost their job in this year purely because these firms are shipping and misusing the H1-B program and bringing people from India and firing Americans from their opportunity to be employed. In my case I have a Master’s degree and well qualified for the job but still to have some budget with less paid Indian worker people are loosing jobs here. What happens for my children? No job?

Corporations have been abusing the H1B program for decades. They like the arrangement because it provides them with cheap non-American labor. The H1B immigrant is sponsored by the corporation and has less opportunity for obtaining other work and therefore are in a poor bargaining position for pay.
As Americans are being laid off in droves, corporations are keeping their H1B labor. They use a variation the liberal mantra, “jobs Americans won’t do” with the position of “jobs Americans can’t do.” Can’t do or can’t do cheaply?
Foreign corporations are the biggest abusers, but the American companies are “keeping up” with this scam.
The known instances of this abuse should be reported to the Department of Labor, and of course, your Congressman.

“Will Trump Kill the H-1B Visa Program?” Why post this? All it does is anger Americans who are tired of greedy corporate transnationals giving jobs away to foreign nationals. Uugh! By the way, if I hear another foreign national use that same old lame argument that they are filling a void for lack of skilled labor here in the US, I’m gonna be sick. Stop insulting Americans. Folks, just google the late Congresswoman, Barbara Jordan’s archived testimonial transcripts regarding the impact of legal and illegal immigration on the US economy in 1990.

As an Immigration Attorney, I refuse to file petitions on behalf of undocumented and employment based immigrants, because in many instances, I’m displacing someone born in the US w/historical ties; someone vested. Furthermore, there’s such a concerted effort to bring cheap labor here to the US its ovewhelmed our federal agencies trying to stay a step ahead. Folks are talking about the H-1B, google and read about the constant assault on the L-1 visas. It’s all out there on the www.

I work for a Great American company…hence the name..lol We are full of Indians..I’d say 40% Indians and most of them are H1B. Its crap that when I walk into the lunch room..there are 20 Indians all speaking foreign language. When we have a position open they say they can’t find a US candidate so they have to hire another Indian. One Indian guy I work with is making 95k/year. Im pretty sure there are a lot of americans that would take that salary in a heart beat. All the indian managers hire other Indians. We should end this program and send them back home.

On the flip side, I see the government spending gobs of money on programs to retrain people to be IT workers, mostly developers. The programs I’ve been in are so poorly run and misguided, an abuse of taxpayer dollars. I’ll skip the bloody details, but when I hear we need to foster STEM careers and pour millions of dollars into the effort, it makes me cringe a bit.

Stop H1-B visas and the Indian economy comes to a standstill. H1-B visa holders are thieves pure and simple. Once in a company their hiring practices discriminate in favor of fellow H1-B visa holders. The truth plan and simple

H1B needs to be eliminated and quickly. I have a Master’s degree in CIS and years of related experience and wanted to get into the IT industry, but that just isn’t a reality for American born citizens.

Indian (90%+ of these scammers), Russian, Asian, and African scammers are coming over stealing American jobs like crazy, it truly is insane. I actually went to a “IT Consulting” scam place (Perfict Global), and they trained us for 6 weeks to become either business analysts or quality assurance engineers. Here’s the kicker, all these scam places do is have everyone in the “batch” lie on their CV’s/Resume and say that they have 5+ (usually 8 years) of experience which is a laughable lie. They do this by making them create fake companies and projects that they used to work at, companies and projects that they never actually worked at or on. Total fabrications. They also are run by Indians and most of the batch members are indians so commonly they take interviews for the batch members to give them a much higher probability of getting the job. They then take almost 70% of the batch members salary for a period of 12 months.

In the end these H1Bser’s and OPT scammers are less qualified than even US born and educated graduates and citizens but when you lie on your resume you’ll always rise to the top. Also another component is the amount of Indians presently working in IT whose only preference is hiring their own kind. So an American worker will always be passed up for an Indian one just so they have another guy at the office that celebrates Diwali with them. The US tech industry/sector is a total joke because of these lying Indian scammers coming here and getting over. From the recruiters down to the unskilled and inexperienced liars that come over here and take American jobs.

Companies seemingly are hiring with job ads flooding my email box and even recruiting companies call me and an Indian-sounding people asking to give them my permission to represent me in front of the hiring companies.

In two years, however, I have not had a single interview with any hiring company.

What if all these Indian recruiters are simply supplying resumes/candidates to the hiring companies so that to create appearance that they are complying with the law, but in actuality they are only hiring cheap Indian workers on H1B? Could this be the case?

H1B needs to be eliminated and quickly. I have a Master’s degree in CIS and years of related experience and wanted to get into the IT industry, but that just isn’t a reality for American born citizens.

Indian (90%+ of these scammers), Russian, Asian, and African scammers are coming over stealing American jobs like crazy, it truly is insane. I actually went to a “IT Consulting” scam place (Perfict Global), and they trained us for 6 weeks to become either business analysts or quality assurance engineers. Here’s the kicker, all these scam places do is have everyone in the “batch” lie on their CV’s/Resume and say that they have 5+ (usually 8 years) of experience which is a laughable lie. They do this by making them create fake companies and projects that they used to work at, companies and projects that they never actually worked at or on. Total fabrications. They also are run by Indians and most of the batch members are indians so commonly they take interviews for the batch members to give them a much higher probability of getting the job. They then take almost 70% of the batch members salary for a period of 12 months.

In the end these H1Bser’s and OPT scammers are less qualified than even US born and educated graduates and citizens but when you lie on your resume you’ll always rise to the top. Also another component is the amount of Indians presently working in IT whose only preference is hiring their own kind. So an American worker will always be passed up for an Indian one just so they have another guy at the office that celebrates Diwali with them. The US tech industry/sector is a total joke because of these lying Indian scammers coming here and getting over. From the recruiters down to the unskilled and inexperienced liars that come over here and take American jobs. This scam needs to end.

Leo, h1b visas are not a necessary evil. The the visas programs can be eliminated tomorrow and there will be more than enough skilled Americans to take those positions. The Indian h1b visa management pipeline must be disrupted.

Please don’t insult indians or any one because of visa programs. Ok I agree with you guys may be some companies are favoring h1b holders. I say just remove OPT extension and H1B and see any indians will step in USA or not . I am not against to US Government. I ask Trump to remove opt and h1b , so indians will not enter USA, so that american people can get many IT Jobs, but dont blame indians or indian companies for this. Indians are hardworking guys , many students will come leaving their families to earn some money. No student will come If opt is removed , so ask trump to remove that . But don’t insult any indians or people how are working on H1b’s. Please Dont Blame !

I blame the the US government for creating mechanism that dis-advantages US Workers and the Indian/American companies that profit from our pain. Peterranjet unemployed IT workers work a lot harder looking for work and keeping there skills up with limited resources then employed h1b/OPT visa holders. Companies who profit from h1b/OPT visas and outsourcing/offshoring should be sent a bill for the money the government spends on welfare to support unemployed American worker locked out the system.If the companies don’t pay the bill there top executive should be jailed until they do.

In 2003, BP, the company I was an IT contractor for, terminated its contracts with its U.S.-based IT contractors to save money, and outsourced all IT functions to Mexico City and India. All of the system administrator positions went to Mexico City, and all of the developer positions went to India. The new Mexican system admins, who worked remotely from Mexico City, couldn’t even speak English, and would send us emails asking questions in unintelligible pidgin English. Their inability to communicate with their English-speaking customers led to many problems later on, so I’m told.

The Indian developers were brought to our location in the U.S. on H1B visas to be trained by the Americans they were replacing. Only a few of them spoke English – the rest had to have their instructions given to them in Hindi by their supervisors. These Indians were obviously nothing but filthy, ignorant peasants, recently dragged from their rice fields. They smelled and looked bad, and I would see them in the washroom, splashing water all over their face, upper body, and all over the counter and floor, as if they were bathing in the Ganges river back home. They clearly had no conception of how to even use a washroom, which makes me wonder if they had any IT training or experience. I doubt it.

The H1B program is totally unnecessary, and un-American, and needs to be completely ended. There is no justification for replacing hardworking Americans with filthy, ignorant third-world savages.

I couldn’t get the “reply” button to work – but – if you seriously think there would be any value in exiting H1b visa holders “training” their American “replacements” you are nuts. The lack of academic rigor and lack of professional standards found in the majority of H1b visa holders is staggering. American workers easily outshine foreigners in the applications developed and used in US companies and it is easy to understand why when you consider the level of intuitive requirements that a foreign worker just doesn’t “get”.
Additionally, the contracting companies have been getting government work and handing it to foreign workers – this is simply bad policy: American tax dollars need to be spent to support American workers FIRST.

Perhaps another aspect of this that needs some changes is managed services and off shore staffing. As a “cost saving” measure the corporation II am working at is converting to managed services to replace a large portion of the developers, DBAs, and other application support roles. Although the managed service company is American, all the replacement workers are foreigners, both in house and off shore. I am not sure how the cost savings is going to work out when, in many instances, it is taking multiple managed services workers to replace one qualified, intelligent, hard-working American worker. So in this instance there were qualified workers already doing the jobs (mostly Americans with some foreign workers), but since managed services with off shore workers are being used, this may fall outside the scrutiny of any H-1B reforms..

Trump will not kill the H1b (and L1, etc.) program, because it will anger the 1 percenters. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. I voted for Trump, because he is the lesser of two evils, but he is and always will be an elistist.

There are more than enough Americans qualified for these jobs. In the past, this situation existed mostly in IT, but now, Accounting jobs are being targeted. McDonald’s just had their corporate accountants train their H1b replacements. Philips Medical is doing the same thing. It goes on and on. It will only continue – every department could be staffed by H1’s or L1’s – Legal, HR, and on down the line. The Indian doctor that you go to is probably an H1b, too.

I just hope that I can do some sort of work that will support me in my old age as the corporate world is collapsing around us. Would never tell a young person to get into this field. Am so glad that my parents are not alive to see this.

I have spent 9 of the last 20 years looking for work in the IT industry. Another 9 years working for companies that would only pay minimal salaries for IT jobs. In addition, None of the jobs I had during that time gave me any useful work skills to further any sort of career.

The entire time I spent looking for work, I also spent a considerable amount of time and money (that I didn’t really have) on either self-education or getting a degree. I felt it absolutely necessary to keep up on technology in order to have any chance of getting hired. When being interviewed for a job (along with the other 50+ applicants) 11 times out of 10, I was told I didn’t have enough experience.

I generally don’t believe in “classifying” employees, however, now that I am over “40” I find that there is ABSOLUTELY age (and other) discrimination practices. If anyone believes there are laws to protect against that, they are sadly mistaken. I was told in an interview once that “they were concerned about my age.” Yep – right to my face. However, when interviewed by the Labor Commission because of my complaint, they said the reason I wasn’t hired was because of my lack of experience (which at the time was 30 years-more than the “age” of the person they hired).

They should do away with H1B and fine employers that don’t hire American citizen’s. If a company can’t find qualified US citizen’s then maybe someone needs to look into the inadequate education from the universities in the US. I’m willing to put in any and all the time and work required to make myself “smart enough” to get hired, but it is our governent, economy, and corporations that are preventing “us” from getting hired.

For all you anti-trump tech workers, trump is your only chance at keeping your jobs and make better wages. My contracting rates are now where they were in the 90’s and seem to be falling all the time. Saw a listing today for $58/day.

I hope Trump terminates this program, but H-1B is the spawn of an unholy alliance of Democrats who want to bring in more foreign/illegal/naturalized voters(Democrats) and Republicans who want cheap labor for donors.

Tech companies will howl if he kills H-1B — but he should remember tech companies are not his friend and will spend the next 4 yrs and 2 months savaging him and everyone around him, no matter what he does.

This land belongs to apaches and red indians who really deserve to be in America.
All europeans(whites), all Afro americans(blacks) , all asians(browns) and others migrated from europe, africa, and asia .

Every citizen of today(white,black,brown) should know..America allowed your forefather to work in USA without a visa, be gracefull we have visas now.

H-1B visa program and others like L1 visa are sweat-shop type of operations that were products of dot-com boom that was followed by dot-com bust. These programs should be either eliminated completely or reworked from scratch to reflect current job market conditions! H-1B program has been abused for many years to replace Americans with temporary workforce displacing good paying US jobs. There is no shortage of skilled IT workers in US, but there is a demand by greedy corporations for “cheap” skilled IT workers that do not need health benefits and 401K’s.

2014 Census data provided more detail that there was NO U.S. shortage of STEM workers in US. Many people who graduate with STEM degrees don’t get jobs in the field as 74% of those who have a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering and math are NOT employed in STEM occupations. An Economic Policy Institute study in 2014 found that the supply of STEM graduates exceeds by 2-to-1 the number of graduates who get hired! That means that even the current 65,000 a year number of H-1B visas is WAY TOO MANY, and it should be significantly reduced – not increased!

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, six out of the top 10 H-1B visa recipients in any given year are IT-focused companies headquartered in India that focus on selling contracts for temporary employment. Many of them specialize in outsourcing and several are based in India although many have offices in US as well (Cognizant, Tata, Infosys, Wipro.) Cognizant is the worst having 12,883 visa renewals in 2014.

This is NOT what H-1B and other temp workforce programs were designed for! This abuse MUST stop! Good paying American jobs are being shipped to India by hundreds of thousands every year!
H-1B and other similar programs MUST be changed not to allow outsourcing companies like Congizant to continue their despicable deeds. Companies should be PROHIBITED (and that must be severely enforced) to replace US workers they already employ with temporary workforce either on-shore or off-shore through the companies that specialize in outsourcing. They destroy middle class of this country!

Osiris, you sound so ignorant and illetrate when you talk the way you do in your comment above. Actually, I can see you in filth morally because of your thinking and abusive language for other people. I wonder if you were ever taught any kind of manners or moral sense in school or at home.

Many Americans and foreigners travel to India for tourism. Most people in India don’t talk or understand Enginsh and American accent. But they do not abuse Americans the way you are insulting Indians for their accent and the way of talking and living. I see a lot of Americans who smell really bad, who are overflowing with fat and flab from all parts of their bodies, kids who leave their ageing parents and seldom check back on them, parents who do not care for their kids, abusive parents who kill their own kids. The point I am trying to make is – you will find all kinds of people everywhere. America and Americans are no different than other people in this world.

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL BACK TO INDIA. I’ve witness it for years, the young out of school in the USA have limited chance when your providing nothing but subserviant bodies for entry level positions from some other country. Most are jibberish pathetic do nothings with false credentials. But the HEADCOUNT is what is really most important by the customers, so the cycle continues!

Follow the money trail to INDIA, only the rich one over there end up here. Start with AIG, GE, HP, IBM etc. then the recruiting companies themselves. SOMETHING is WRONG with the current hiring practices. Most have no or little experiences. Very discriminatory practices. BS and GREED.

H1-B Indians are high-turnover employees. I lived with one for 3 years. To his credit, he got his Master’s degree in CS here. In a few years, though, while he’s still in his 20s he’ll go back home for an arranged marriage which he’s not really looking forward to. His parents want him back in India. Most of the Indians coming here are from southern India and there have been cultural and linguistic differences for years. My housemate was from northern India and even he didn’t want to be around the majority southern Indians here. I got suckered into an MLM scheme by southern Indians years ago and they’re all about the money and will use any opportunity they can to get it, including taking advantage of the current H1-B practices. While no ESL school in their right minds would hire someone from India to teach English, India was part of the British Empire for a while. I’ve head Eastern Europeans are better than Indians at programming and software development, but even so there aren’t enough of them who speak even passable English. I think the H1-B visa program needs to be phased out and cost controls put in place at universities so more prospective students will want to do STEM majors, seeing they have a better chance at getting jobs in their field since less foreign nationals will be being brought in on the H1-B program and possibly other loopholes. Unless he becomes dictator for life and survives long enough (he’s 70 already), Trump won’t be able to do much, and who knows what the next president will do.

H1B visa must be stopped. All the talk about not finding people is monesense.. the moment Trump will say pay H1b visa the same as the person he replaces, all will be stopes. Our kids and grand kinds should go into science and engineering. By bringing from other countries we demotivate our kids. Who will want to compete with a cheap labor who really get paid 1/2 of the person they replaced? We have enough of it. I see it in the company I work for. I was the lucky one who was kept but cannot watch what is going on. Bringing more and more when there are so many people who already here looking for the job?? The answer is simple – 1/2 price .

Another thing employers don’t realize is that it is common practice for a lot of foreign workers to cheat certification exams. I have heard stories from foreign coworkers about how money can buy a person to take the highest level certification exam using your name. Add that to a false resume showing years of experience in a position that doesn’t actually exist but no way for an employer to verify and you can begin to see how the non-technical hr workers tasked to hire candidates get fooled all the time!

Grow up guys companies are now moving to automation…..now h1b then automation then why they move all manufacturing to china…..and other bullshit…..govt should give money for unemployed wellfare…..this is biggest joke…..you all who are writing above born in capitalistic economy…..so grow up learn to create capital….be entrepreneur….donot behave like communist or socialist…..your ancestors made USA great not because they were salaried because they created country where any body can do business….so learn it and these menial jobs for Indians and china people

The reason why you lost your job is not because of foreigners, but your own country men decided to sell you out and your attitude of entitlement. Look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, mid-upper management positions are still dominated by White. Most IT/Developer/technical jobs require white board interview, you cannot fake or bs your way through those unless you have heavy connection. But even if you had connection, they wouldn’t bring in a mass amount of crappy workers, because it’s only going to make that team less efficient and overworked, at the end of day, it’s probably going to drag down the whole team’s performance and your own connection ended up getting fire.

I believe the H1B holders are also the victim here. Imagine these H1B holders getting much less pay but probably doing much more ,paying the same taxes and sucking up the same high cost of living. American or not if you are totally irreplaceable or capable, you will always hold your own. The biggest problem is entitlement, if I was the employer, if I was able to obtain helps who are totally capable, willing to take a less pay and work longer hours why should I consider you? Just because you happened to be White and born in the U.S does not automatically entitle you to anything. In fact, if you look at the employment statistics , White Male already have it the easiest when it comes to finding a job, even if they are less qualified than their non-white peers.

Another thing employers don’t realize is that it is common practice for a lot of foreign workers to cheat certification exams. I have heard stories from foreign coworkers about how money can buy a person to take the highest level certification exam using your name. Add that to a false resume showing years of experience in a position that doesn’t actually exist but no way for an employer to verify and you can begin to see how the non-technical hr workers tasked to hire candidates get fooled all the time!

I have long suspected the abuse of the STEM H1-B system. I have a Ph.D. in biomedical research and I am reduced to being an Uber driver servicing the many foreigners on H1-B in silicone valley. I am theee poster child for this issue!! I am practically on the verge of tears reading these reports from my fellow (screwed) Americans. But let us take note that abuses of the H1-B system is no fault of our foreign brothers and sisters. Let’s all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” around a camp fire. The real focus of our American ire should be directed to politicians who do not take legislative, judicial and executive actions to prevent H1-B abuses. Correct me if I’m wrong but when foreign students graduate from American universities aren’t there even more of their classmates who are American? Same universities, same classes, same degrees; American graduates should be giving a clear preference for American jobs. Politicians don’t seem to realize that for each foreign H1-B worker hired there is one American citizen who’s career ambitions will have been squashed. And there are many more prospective STEM students who see this career devastation and opt for degrees outside of the field. Can you blame them?

Like I said earlier, a huge amount of incompetent workers will only drag the performance of the department/company down as a whole. The H1B workers aren’t incompetent , but corporate America is simply abusing them to cut cost. It’s kind of like Wal-mart, their items are not top notch, but the prices appeal to the general consumers. However, don’t expect to pay one dollar for an item that needed five dollar in cost to manufacture. At the end of day, with the advancement in AI/automation, H1B or not. The resource which cost the least /w the highest productivity will triumph. Just remember this, if anyone given a choice, no one would like to work like slaves.

I work in an IT team which has citizens, green card holders and h1b … where same level people of all 3 types are on same wage-band … and all the wages are in excess of $95-100K
….
The basic fact is those who file for immigrant visas always give good and equal wages to their employees, because you need to do the same for the immigrant visa process
Also bad wages, don’t get you the best talent whether you hire citizen or green card or h1b
……..
The wage drop for some h1b is not enforced by consultants but by companies who want to reduce IT costs.
If tomorrow those h1b paid lower than citizens goes away
1. Do you really think the client company or the consulant company is automatically going to pay higher wages easily?
2. And if they do, where do you think the ultimate cost is going to be passed on to?
……..
But that’s not the real reason. Silicon Valley & Seattle companies are filled with STEM students and all recruiters are looking to hire more, but the demand is still higher than supply
……..
And finally ff there are roughly 650k h1b professionals in US … their average earning is around $70k (considering that Valley gives 100+, NY 90+ , Chicago 70+ & Austin 60+ for same work from personal experience)
That is also means annually
1. $4.5+ billion in federal taxes
2. $2+ billion in SS taxes & mind you 90+% of these will never use SS benefits
Plus state and indirect taxes
……..
There definitely ain’t 650k jobless citizens with equivalent educational qualifications to replace the above

Don’t the idiots in power think take over of the US IT industry can be a national security problem? When will our politicians wake up and see this program has transformed highly educated, hard working, proud and contributor to the US economy into welfare receivers? This is happening to me and my neighbor two houses down, both Director of Engineering in Silicon Valley in 90’s and up to a few years ago. Now both have been unemployed for over a year in spite of being highly qualified for many positions at companies all around us. Here in Silicon Valley, it is very clear that Indian managers do not hire non-Indians and lay offs impact mostly citizens leaving intact H1B holders. It is quite easy to see hiring discrimination if someone cares and wants to look into it. Just see who applied and whom got hired or a simpler way is take a walk in campus of any of high tech company and will most likely see more non-Indian in Bangalore than in those campuses. It is total B.S. when companies justify hiring of H1B due to lack of local applicants. It was a joke when a major networking company had 8 layers of Indian VP and Directors with a few engineers down the chain. Folks, H1B Managers bring H1B and they are all over and it is not just Engineering anymore. These guys have made hiring of their own an art. I have been to a number of interviews and I know they were interviewing to reject me and not interested in my skill sets. There are plenty of US citizens who been passed over in favor of one of their kind. I have voted for Democrats all my life but if Republican can put an end to this shit and help us get back our jobs, they will have my vote as far I go.

Indian IT consulting companies have been misusing this VISA like anything. They cheat corporate’s back ground companies to place people for very cheap salary. Even they place college grads. as experienced developers. A lot of federal agencies award IT contracts to indian based companies and they ditch americans and only hire H1-Bs,

Now i understood why you people are losing jobs.
Everyone think practically,
Today you people blame H1Bs,
Say if H1Bs are completely wiped out, Then you people blame will blame Greencards
Say if complete Greencards are wiped out, Then you people will blame Blacks or other race
You people lack maturity. If you have maturity automatically you people will get jobs.Politicians are taking advantage of this.
Keep watching Trump visa reform, Trump will rename the H1B visa to something else or will add regulations but he will not stop importing foreigners.
There are many american citizens still have jobs because they are matured.
As said before, you people call yourself citizens because you people born here but remember your father or forefathers were second world war refugees, they dont even had visas or passports. So please show some humanity.
Again please do show some respect, because H1Bs also pay heavy taxes and employers are paying heavy amount to get visas. Corporates (Google,Facebook,Microsoft, Indian companies,chinese companies etc) are getting benefitted because of H1bs and also USA goverment also getting benefitted(because of heavy fees). It is win-win so far.

My only advise is be matured, start thinking in everyone shoes. It gets frustated if we lose job but the only way to keep our job safe is always keep your skills updated. I was in H1b but even i lost job to some US citizen (US citizen replaced me) but i never cried foul. Even in my home country i had lost my job so some one.

Today’s world is full of competiton, we like it or not, Though there are man made borders, each country is depending on other countries heavily. USA is largest importing nation.
Think without importing USA people can just eat corn,milk and eggs and some local produced meats which will not be sufficient for every citizen.
We all get cheap products in walmart/ target, just look for label where these products are made. Before criticising see if you can stay without buying these products.
Again the complete system is designed by citizens of USA. so please be matured.

Funny how ignorant people become easily distracted about building a wall to keep illegals from stealing American jobs which the media who is owned by government and big corporate America are feeding this garbage to the sheeple while big corporations and government allows the entry and grants H1B visas in the thousands on a daily basis of immigrants to enter the United States to steal our middle class jobs. These big greedy corporations are killing off the middle class and displacing American workers by sponsoring H1B visas to countries like India. It’s big money and it lines the pockets of big corporate CEO’s and VIP’s. Now there’s your real problem and not a goddamn wall or lower income jobs. Middle class workers are being displaced and forced into poverty. What kind of future will our children have?

I was an H1B seeker who was qualified for a tech job – sponsored and was working fulltime on OPT – who were then had to leave the country because I didn’t pass the H1B’s lottery. I have been to school in the US for 6 years, lived here for 10 years, working through OPT for 2 years, had my relationship, friendship with the locals here, and yet, failed a freaking lottery. I think you guys discuss H1B as if it’s so easy to get for a foreigner. It’s not! It’s a random number generator.

I wanted to work in the US because the country is more progressive and the technology is cutting edge, where I can’t get the same thing in my home country. But 10 years paying for school, cost of living, and taking only 2 years worth of salary, I ended up going home. I’m sorry to hear your loss as “American-first”, but as an H1B seeker, I accepted an unfair system of a lottery, instead of actually merit-based. So I’m sick of hearing this entitlement narrative above. Everyone should work hard and competitive no matter what. If you are irreplaceable, with the advantage of being a US citizen, you will not be replaced by someone else – foreigner or not. Please stop complaining and only look for jobs that you like. There are tons of places that hire Americans only, especially in start-ups and small businesses. Jeez, not everyone can afford the insane cost of hiring a foreigner.

I have been reading all the comments from the top.
Lot of things being said in those comments like banning H1B, stopping OPT-extension
I certainly understand the issue and the pain that the real American unemployed citizens are going through. Here are my two cents for what its worth.
1) Stopping OPT extension – there are many foreign students who are taking courses in USA Universities and many of them must be having in their mind to go for H1B right after their school. If OPT extension is stopped, then the studying in USA universities would not be so interesting and also the number of admissions would come down drastically.
What if Govt could make sure that financially it is not difficult at all to graduate in any USA university. So reduce college fee/waiver it for those with more than certain GPA..etc something like that. This should bring more US citizens into the job field and no one would be able to say that there is not enough skill. Also, reduce the number of months of OPT extension to a minimum of 3 months.
2) Banning H1B – Instead of banning, what if Govt can take measure to make the minimum prevailing wage of a H1B worker and that of an American citizen are same then there would not be an issue at all. The solution seems over simplistic probably with that statement, but what I meant to say is that American citizens are discriminated because of this difference in per/hr salary. Make them equal somehow and lets see how many companies will be ready to import some techie into the USA.
Though I am not from the USA, I do hear whats being said. Yes, jobs for Americans.

Body shoppers like TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, Tata, InfoSys and a plethora of small so called ‘Consultancies’ that are mini versions of these behemoths like TCS etc in the USA itself that basically feed off the H1-B. They ship engineers with 5-8 years of experience with or without Master’s degrees direct to the USA to compete with our own graduates who struggle for opportunities. Head to Connecticut, New Jersey, San Jose and you will see hordes of these engineers who have basically completely displaced American engineers. Tech companies no longer want to hire American educated Engineers because they are entry level and need training or would need a higher salary. It is easier to simply ship an experienced H1-B direct from India to here and he/she would work for much less – and also to replace American experienced workers. If we are serious about giving our own kids an opportunity then we should stop the greed of these Tech companies and toss the H1-B program in the trash. Those who are here on H1-Bs need to be asked to train our American kids and then asked to go home. Please understand that Tech companies like Google, IBM and Microsoft liberally use ‘double dipping’. Not only have they moved thousands of jobs to Bangalore and Hyderabad but they are also using this H1-B train to replace local workers. All this is done under the guide of ‘We cannot find people’. This is complete baloney!

H1B has to end soon. It is an insult to American workers. American Universities offer training to foreigners, and then you hire them under the argument that this skills are not available to American workers. If Trump does not end H1B, anchor baby scheme, and green card sponsorships, his presidency will be a lie.

The H1B visa program is one of many programs enacted by Congress that have DESTROYED our economic base, yet made all the politicians and CEO’s grow their personal wealth by 1000%.

It is a FACT that companies made deals with foreign agencies, not caring about the sub-standard contractors who flooded our markets and effectively nuked the US IT workforce. Nevermind that computers speak ENGLISH… if you found an H1B contractor who didn’t… they were hired.

KILL THE H1B PROGRAM IMMEDIATELY. There are tens of thousands of AMERICAN workers, who SPEAK ENGLISH that could to a far better job than any foreigner. And any incidental training costs are far less than the billions of dollars lost coming from lost productivity due to non-English-speaking contractors who cannot communicate effectively because their 1st language is not English. Not to mention, foreign (Indian) culture loves to say “yes” to any questions about whether or not they can actually DO what is requested of them.

TRUMP: KILL THE H1B PROGRAM. IT IS NOT A PART OF MAKING THE USA GREAT AGAIN. IT IS ONE REASON WHY WE ARE *NOT* GREAT ANYMORE!!!!!

I work as an IT manager at a company where more than 30% of my IT colleges are on H1B visa.

The biggest problem that I have is that whenever I try to recruit – I do not find my country-men well trained, most of them are not up to date with skills. There are some really good ones who are extremely good and they go and join startups, but there is nobody to do support and small IT jobs and I have no option but to employ H1Bs.

Are there talented Americans ? Yes there are – but they are not well trained or too lazy to train themselves.

Ideally need a combination of train americans and do away with H1b in another 5-10 years. But with the current supply of american local tech workforce, it is just not possible

I live in Berkeley, CA and my son went to UC Berkeley. There is not a more rigorous IT curriculum in the world than the ones at Berkeley, Stanford, San Jose State, USF, SF State, etc. I heard MIT, Harvard, and Princeton aren’t too bad either. If companies are claiming that there are not enough highly skilled IT workers available that are citizens and they have to go to f…ing India to find them, I am calling BS on them all.

Why Telugu(andhra pradesh and telangana state) speaking Indian People are Bad,they won’t speak English in office ,If a Telugu speaking Indian becomes a hire manager he only hire Telugu speaking Indian.I seen my self @ the end of the interview they will speak and ask about their parents are also Telugu.Even they won’t go to Indian Restaurant unless it is owned by Telugu people. See yourself Microsoft CEO (Satya Nadella) is a Telugu person he now hire Telugu speaking only. Indian.70% consulting firm in USA and India are owned by Telugu speaking Indian.We need to kick out all the H1b Indians out of US to save American jobs.End all H*b VISA. Please call all the Radio shows,TV shows to create a awareness in media.

The only people on here defending H1Bsers who take American jobs, are the actual H1Bsers themselves. The few American ones ignorant enough to advocate and hire H1Bsers deserve (and will), have their jobs and positions taken by more H1Bsers in the future.

Leaving native Americans …. every one here is from across the border….even Trumps wife is an immigrant…so are Trump’s parents and all people living here are immigrants….accept the fact and work hard for your bread, rather than complaining .. PEACE

The truth is 85 – 90 % people coming in on H1B’s are average at best and incompetent at worst. Less than 1% are exceptional.
My guess is they wont kill the visa, but rather set a minimum salary between 150K – 200K. Which will kill it!

This is very disappointing to see just the anger of US citizens over Indian or Indian companies on working here on work visa. Some people are passing racist comments to Indian. This is not an appropriate behavior from one human to another. The only reason somebody is loosing their jobs is because of our-self. With the rapid change in technologies, you always have to upgrade your skill set or whatever technologies you are studying in college, may not be very useful in grabbing a job in real world.

As an H1B worker in USA, I always suffer the pain on being on H1B and maintain your legal status in this country. I bet, more then 80% employers refuses to take H1B visa holder. Believe me, you don’t want to be in my shoe. We are already treated as secondary after Citizen for any job opening.

There are definitely loop holes in every immigration policies and people tend to mis-utilize the loop holes (fake experience, special skills vs no skills). Government should take some action on them to stop it.

If govt stops H1B and OPT, the whole infrastructure will collapse. Without H1B, you cannot imagine buying an iPhone for the price it is available today or cheaper google services or Microsoft Office at this price or so many other products which makes the USA as top on tech industry.

We Indians are very hard working and nobody has intention to replace Americans. More then 90% of Indians are here for better money and better life.

I’m happy to go back to my home country, if Govt stops H1B and not extend my visa next time, and I’m sure most of the Indian would be.

Please stop this nonsense. and drop the post. Let Trump administration think, how to solve the loop holes.

Everyone is so focused on H1B program which allows only limited number of visa to be given every year. The bigger beast is L1 visa, there is no limit on number of visas companies can get and they are available throughout the year unlike H1B which accepts application only once a year.One more thing to note here is a dependent of an L1 visa holder can also work.

I am an immigrant my self and I did my masters here and I am working in IT.I benefited from the system but as I honestly feel it is being abused.It is so true that almost all the jobs nowadays go to foreigners.There is indeed shortage of tech workers.However it makes me sad to see that the system is abused especially by Indian IT firms who lie and prefer only their own people.I feel really sorry for Local American workers who are really good most of the time but are not hired due to lack of experience.Programming is becoming an easy job and a little training can turn locals into very good programmers.I sometimes say I am working in India and not in USA.Programming pays lots of money as well and the job is not at all hard as many believe.A 6 month training can make one a good programmer.The government should do something about this otherwise it will be dominated by Indians and it reaches a point where going back is not an option.

I have more than 10 years of experince and all my life I have been working as a contractor. No employers are willing to hire me as a full time. i have worked for more than 5 companies and got replaced by so called h1b workers. I am looking for Job from last 5 months, I am not able to find. I could hardly get interview call even-though I see thousands of openings. I gave up hope and start woking at small local store. where is the lack that we need to fill it. someone please how me job how to get it.

I’m now 67 and a manager in IT and about to retire. In short, the H1B program is a blight on this country and an insult to parents who struggle to pay for their kids ‘higher’ education! A lot of it is political – trying to pacify India and keep them as ‘our friend’. Then there are the lobbyists for the big Indian companies which have big headquarters here – like TATA for example. Then, there are the guilty and ‘politically correct’ American companies who somehow believe that ‘diversity’ is exemplified by hiring foreigners OVER hiring our own American citizen college graduates of all cultures. I intend this to be my main topic during my exit interview when I retire in about 6 months. It is a scam on the American people, no doubt about it!

Folks, Companies like IBM and their executives only care about their Bonus and Stock options. As such they lay off workers over 40 and replace them with Costa Ricans, Brazillians, Mexicans, Indians etc. Don’t blame the Indians. Blame the execs that only care for them selves. Look at the IBM board. Its all full of former clueless IBM CEO’s. As an FYI, the folks replacing us have no skills and it is a Money game. Don’t bank on Trump. Obama said the same thing and the layoffs continue. DC is full of crooks that onl full their pockets.

Nishant, I really cannot believe that you would be so quick to play the infamous (and WORN out) RACIST card! My wife is from another country also, but the only reason she is here is due to marriage. Her country (Ukraine) also has many very skilled IT personnel, but unfortunately, they don’t grow up learning English and therefore have even fewer options that folks in India.

But, let me be very clear, if Ukraine, or Germany, or Finland, or any other European country were coming to this country by the millions like from India, I’d ALSO be saying the very same thing! So please drop the ‘racist’ card from your hand! It doesn’t play well any longer.

Besides IT, people (mostly from India and I can’t explain how./why) can come here on various visas (H1B being one of them) and get Small Business Loans that any American Citizen (white, black, or yellow) could only DREAM of getting! Please don’t play so naïve here! YOU know what is really going on because you guys network and share information. People come here from India, get fantastic loans from the government that I can’t get, and they buy motels, gas stations, and convenience stores by the many thousands. They run these for a while, send money back to India, and then when their time is up on their visa, they either have a relative come over and replace them or file bankruptcy and flee the country with their profits. How do I know? Because I have Indian friends who tell me how things work!

You dare accuse us of racism? What if millions of Americans started coming to India and taking jobs, getting citizenship, and then bringing over all their relatives and changing YOUR culture and economics? Do you think your people might be a little upset? Sure they would! But they wouldn’t be racist – they would just be protecting their economy and their culture and there is nothing wrong with that.

I suggest that you stop feigning naiveté and go back to India and see if you can improve conditions in your own country rather than taking jobs our graduates would love to be able to have. And I train Indian contractors at my work place so I know what I’m talking about.

I agree that the H1B visa must be cancelled and those who already in the U.S. holding H1B must not be issued a green card. Taking away jobs from U.S. citizens is just like a war since it destroys not only un/under employed American but his/her family members and his/her entire generation that follows. Cancel H1b, let the dust settle, see where the shortage of workers really is, let the employers (who need that skillsets) train for those skillsets americans to the necessary work.

Am on H1B Visa, 25 years old and I was planning to go back to my country even before even Trump thought about running for office, I got my computer science degree both BS and MS from M.I.T but the rules on the H1B are so difficult that it’s impossible to have a social life in the US, am still very young so I don’t care. So many companies outside the US would gladly hire me in a heart beat

You need to understand that it is foreign students who are here in millions and all these universities thrive due to them. When you abolish their chances that they can find a job after they finish their graduate or phd programs, none of them would show up. It is a double edged sword.

Disclaimer: I am an Indian who has a masters degree from a reputable US university working here legally in the US with an H1 visa working for a fortune 50 company.

Here is what I see from my perspective and experience. H1B is under heavy abuse by big Indian Consulting companies such as TCS, CTS, Infosys, PWC who are securing H1B visas to the tune of at least 5k per company giving low wages to their employees. This is making it hard for the American employee as well an Indian who has gone to school here to get into any of these positions.

That being said, I see some major issues in the American culture causing many Americans to not find jobs. My first job was at a startup, where I was supposed to be a part of a skunkworks team who was doing agile and creating yet another deals site. I was the only Indian in the company and they liked me a lot because I was very Americanized in my culture and communication skills. The first issue that I noticed is the amount of distrust that Americans have against each other always conspiring to out do each other and even senior management. This competitive spirit works against them to some extent. In a matter of small time there were political alliances. The only person who could get anything done was me, because of my neutrality and to certain extent my Subservience( thanks to my Indian values). The other thing I realized about the American tech worker is that they are sort of set in their ways and consider their ways to be the only right way. My manager wanted this guy to be more productive and learn more tools like sublime text editor and not use vi. The guy some how loves vi and is not ready to change. Now the manager (white American) gets angry and starts looking for other people. Can’t find much people, somehow finds an external Indian guy whose brother runs a consulting firm in India who can do anything the manager wants. Job 1 outsourced. Another guy wants to do cool stuff and keeps pestering the manager to rewrite the entire code in nodejs. Bombastic manager wants to keep the backend a sql database and rest API written in .net and C sharp. 2 nd job outsourced. After that the CEO (white American) thinks he is paying too much for the manager and his vision is not getting executed, directly contacts me to take over managers job and start offshoring the full operation. I will have the title of manager but occasionally I would have to take calls in India morning times. I said fine I will do that as long as you give my colleagues 2 months severance pay. He says no and I quit. Heard the manager sued the company and the CEO offshore pretty much all tech work and hired the external Indian guy to manage the work that his brother and team are doing from offshore. Bottom line Americans lack of sub servience will cause them lot of grief in this global work force. I have seen American product managers and non technical vp (mostly white female Mbas) prefer Indian tech managers as they are easier to work with than American counterparts as they are more subservient. American techies use a lot of technical jargon that management can’t understand or doesn’t care about. Also Americans are mostly male dominant and follow the more technical and aggressive alpha male, are sarcastic to women and other minority tech workers like blacks. In such an environment an H1 foreign tech worker who is ambitious in an non aggressive fashion can rise phenomenally. H1 workers are more malleable and easy going, and not hard set in their ways. And even if H1 goes away American business owners will give their work to Indian off shore tech shops as they are way cheaper.

I am on H1B, and I can tell you with 100% confidence that the H1B and other visa programs are misused by consulting companies very badly. There are lot of loop holes, which nobody cares to fix. Since I worked for big body shop company, I will tell you guys how all these work and why american companies support this.

First off America is a capitalist country, meaning big corporates and companies have a huge hand in policy making and even governing. The rules are made by and made for corporates. The corporates worry only about profit. That is what the mantra of capitalism. make huge profit by killing the environment, and people and whatever comes on their way. Now take an example of a small IT department of 10 people in a Company ABC. Now company ABC spends 500,000$ on these 10 employees as salary alone.They have been working for the company for more than 15-20 years, everything going good. Now ABC started thinking about the profit or it wants to invest in some other sector or wants to cut some costs.

ABC looks out for option and here comes the consultaning company XYZ. XYZ says I will take care of your IT department, just pay me $300,000. ABC is very happy because he is gonna save $200,000 every year that he can invest on some other sector or can give that as bonus to its CEO/CTO/CFO whoever lives on top of the chain.

Now let’s see how XYZ manages this. XYZ applies for couple of H1B visas. He got 2 H1B visas and recruits 2 guys from India/China/Brazil or wherever he has an office. XYZ will pay only $100,000 to all his H1B guys. Still he has $200,000 paid by the ABC to fulfill the IT duties. Now ABC does the offshoring. He may have some 100 guys offshore in India/China/Brazil etc.. Since the Dollar to local currency conversion gives lot of local money, he only has to pay, say $50,000 to all the guys sitting in the offshore office. So remaining $150,000 is XYZ’s profit!!!!

They guys come in on H1B will always do a conversion of dollar money to his local country’s currency which will always give him more and he thinks he is getting paid high. The guys back in those countries anyways get way more than what others make in his/ her country. So the real beneficiaries of H1B is the big corporates and the consulting firms. Corporates doesnot need to worry about any thing because they contracted it to consultancies. Consultancies try to find all the loopholes and try to abuse this to make more money. It should be stopped !!

Now coming to my story, I came in for such a consultancy and the pay I got was not at all related to what I was doing here. I used to design architectures for software applications, Did the UI design, Coded it, tested it, deployed it and supported it all single handedly. But I was paid peanuts. I realized this much later in my career and with much hardships I got to prove my skills to another company and they were ready to employ me with the same pay that they gave to other American workers. I did not replace anyone nor did anyone train me. I have seen people abuse the visa program, especially L1 . The managers and pencil pushers come in on L1 and they get the green card so easily with out dong any work,but talking. The low paid workers suffer alot because they can’t voice, at the end of the day it’s all about supporting their family. So I would say change the rule, stop the abuse and make it more cleaner and make everyone happy.Govt should scrutinize consulting firms who applies for H1Bs. Lottery system should be stopped. Because of the lottery system, people file duplicate applications.Visa should be for high skilled labor/high skilled people. Allow those high skilled people to create jobs here, so that they can give back to the society.

Reading the comments here just shows how short-sighted and ignorant people can be and the unfortunate narrow range of focus that comes with it.

1. Killing H1B and OPT like it’s a gunshot away
A major chunk of Indians (and a lot of other foreign nationals, BTW) come flying over timezones, leaving behind their family, maybe children even, to study and earn a good education. Education in USA for international students is NOT. Cheap. We pay out-of-state tuition (which is nowhere close to what a US citizen will pay) by taking up education loans (at more than double the interest rate prevalent in USA, btw), and guess what? Try killing OPT and H1B and watch your universities cripple and their fundings and finances go haywire.

2. Eating your jobs like it’s free pie
What’s more desirable to the hiring company – An American IT graduate without a “thick accent”, with a comparable skill-set and a citizenship? Or an Indian IT graduate, with or without a “thick” accent, with the same skill-set and NO citizenship (hence the pains for sponsorship)? No points for guessing.
So if you’re not landing jobs like your fellow Indian friends who are “apparently less capable”, let’s try to understand again, why.
Landing a job in a foreign country is NOT easy – definitely not when you haven’t earned those skills – especially not, with a “thick accent” and “possible sponsorship needs” – and irrespective of whether you post a fake CV or not. America is not a charity, the Silicon Valley isn’t a charity event and their jobs are not free pie.

3. Let’s talk about frauds
While i wholeheartedly and completely support the demolition of fraud practices like fake work experience, H1B frauds etc., terminating OPT / H1B is NOT the solution. International workers / employees constitute not just “fraud Indians”, but other nationals who actually go through rigorous educational programs and earn their jobs without just a fake resume (which, believe it or not, also include a lot of Indians too). Are we trying to do away with unity in diversity and make way for a disconnected America in 2017 and beyond? Instead, maybe make the rules and guidelines for OPT / H1B stricter, more defined and more towards the well-being of America and American development. We’re educated individuals; let’s use it towards a long-term awareness of the consequences of your thoughts.

4. Lastly, research, Silicon Valley and technological development
Yes, Silicon Valley is downed in a huge sea of Indians. I, in fact, know a lot of Indians contributing to research in America, but because the USA has the resources to let them – not because they want to eat your jobs?! Is America not benefiting from it at all? Is the Silicon Valley not churning enough money from the “thickly accented” Indians working there who probably love to share the warmth of Diwali with you? I understand the frustration but being disrespectful, racist and hateful is not going to take America anywhere. Nope. We can either do it together and make it work right, or let the world segregate in hatefulness, in a world already filled with so much hate.

P.S., I’m really glad and blessed to be able to work in an environment that looks at cultural differences as a plus, and aims to bring together people from all over the world, coexist and do great work TOGETHER. Kudos to such people that still exist!

– Your standard, thickly-accented Indian who just shared Diwali goodies at work

Workers at EverSource Energy (formerly Northeast Utilities) were affected by this H-1B event too! Lots of news earlier this year by Senator Richard Blumenthal but don’t think anything ever happened. Perhaps it will be revisited again? It should! Here are 2 articles:

I am a proud Indian on who graduated from US University and since then on H1B for 10+ years.

First of all, If I were from any other country other than India on H1B for that long I would have been a Citizen by this time. I pay taxes + fees that even US Citizen do not have to pay.I legally came and legally stay here compare to millions of illegals who are are here and simply using tax payers money (which includes this H1B guy’s money as well).

No system is perfect and there are few occassions this H1B program is abused. Do not blame India or Indian for that but if you must have to then blame your greedy corporate hacks which are 1% of you.

If the system is fixed and even if that means I have to take my US citizen children and go, I will be happy to do that. How many of you can do if Native Americans as you to leave their homeland? So simply do not blame and by the way I supported Trump hoping that he could make change including welcoming changes to H1B program such as misusing it and make H1B folks life easier for those who do not abuse like illegals.

I have been writing letters to Senators and Congressmen for years about this abuse and outsourcing of America’s workforce. They always, always write back with the same lies. “A free and open workforce, provide skills Americans do not have”……..the usual total crap.
I work for a company in Las Vegas, over the last 4 years it has gone almost all Indian. I was at a Christmas party, and just happened upon a programmer for Aristocrat Tech, he said they are training there Indian replacements now and will be laid off May 2017.
Just so fed up with how people in power crap on the American people.

H1B does need to change but I do believe it is necessary for the US to function and remain a super power. I am sure, like me, many of you have come across many foreign students (Indian, Chinese, Indonesian, Irish, etc.). If you befriended any of them, you would know that most like us, come from modest backgrounds and have to pay a much higher tuition to go to school here. I do believe they should have every opportunity to work and make their life better.

Changes need to be made though and especially situations like Disney should never be allowed. There needs to be a way to regulate pay scales. Also, maybe the companies themselves need to be more open. Not saying that I have a solution but, maybe they let workers know that they need to cut costs and ensure the pay cuts happen equally at all levels. Another personal experience that I can share is of the time I tried to launch a venture of my own. Wasn’t anything big but I needed help and needed cheap labor. I had a limited budget and I tried extremely hard to hire developers and other american citizens but everyone wanted more than I could afford. Maybe, they were already well established or maybe their ego did not allow them to accept a low paying offer. I ended up splitting time between an american and an eastern European developer to get my project off the ground.

Also, I am sure Mr. Trump employs a lot of H1B workers and immigrants in his multiple businesses. He is driven by money and profit so I would ask what happens when he needs to replace those folks with Americans who may not accept that same pay? You and I may, but not everyone will.

So, yes, some changes are definitely needed but not at the cost of folks who have worked just as hard as the rest of us, come here the right way, paid their dues and are now working as hard as the rest of us. Also, we need to be mindful of the competition and be ready to roll up our sleeves and accept the reality.

P.S. the system would not let me reply to a specific comment so I just want to point out that Paul Art is a hypocrite. He is complaining about the same system that allowed him to become a citizen back in day.

@Paul Art @JamesBrown
You guys sample the American population and prove that you are incompetent and expect the Indian H1B Workers to train you guys !! You people have reached the point where you are blaming others for your incapabilities.

@PaulArt, why did you move to the US from a foreign country and get US Citizenship ? So you and your family can move from a foreign land but others shouldnt? Why such a greedy attitude !! ??

People should think twice before complaining and whining. There is a whole generation of people who live here far away from their families and friends sacrificing to improve the quality of life. Blaming such attitude is inhuman and racial. Get a life you guys !!

@Raghav
Your comment is incomprehensible, rewrite your comment slowly so it makes sense. Frankly corporations could hire whom ever they want I just think they should not profit from it. If they build iPhones in China those phones should sold in China and if they’re imported here they should heavily taxed to compensate the government for the cost of American citizens who live here and have no way of getting a jobs at the company that makes iPhones . Same with hiring h1b/L1 and opt visas, those companies should be heavily tax and fines to compensate the Americans who are being discriminated against. Companies should not profit off not hiring American citizens.

@James
Your initial comment seemed like you were venting your frustration towards the H1B workers by asking them to leave their jobs and train replacement American workers but your reply to my comments is indeed reasonable.

Again, outsourcing and H1b are two different aspects and you seem to have mixed thoughts about them. If you are asking Govt to tax outsourced jobs, yes that seems reasonable.

Do you know that H1b is a dream for many foreign professionals to fulfill their American dream? America should feel proud about having such programs and use this program to recruit some brilliant brains from across the globe.

Penalizing the professionals who are already living here in the US and have contributed to the betterment of this country in some form or the other is unfair. I am only condemning your demand to send the people here back.

Your thoughts are realistic and agreeable to a communalist government but not for a capatalist culture and govt like USA. The economy of this country is driven entirely by the private sector and the government is only playing the moderator role here.

I empathize the concerns of fellow americans who have commented in this article and if this situation had happened in India, i would have felt just like you. The H1B program is one of the issue and needs to be addressed by scrutinizing the companies that misuse them but not get rid of them and blame the people who benefit from it.

People who benefit from H1b should not be your concerns but the corporations that tend to misuse such programs should be. Hope this makes sense to you now.

I work in American company. I can see many american manager can not able to handle simple project with tight client deadlines. American employees want holidays every now and then. Friday work from home, Sat,Sun on leave. However h1b worker work like anything.Even they work on weekends. Most of the American who joined as programmer they worked in old technologies. Some of them worked in mainframe, natural etc languages. They need to upgrade themselves.

Why everyone is talking about H1b they should have to discuss about TN visa. It is also cutting US jobs.

I totally agree on what you said. Even I am on H1B, and I can tell you that the H1B and other visa programs are misused by consulting companies very badly. Not just the pay, the main problem I see in silicon valley is jobs are filled by same vendors/consultants and eligible candidates are not getting opportunities because all jobs are filled by manager contacts in the team (getting from same consultant). Not sure how much HR’s are not getting aware of this but this is happening in pretty much every company

I feel most of average Americans are jokers sometimes. Instead of taking H1B seriously they simply talk about scrapping it. They should be talking about the damage already done by h1b, like sending tech industry criminals behind the bar for misuse of it. deporting all misused h1b and master degree students, hefty penalty for all companies who misused h1b.

Let me tell all of you… the H1b and L1 programs are iron clad and they’re not gonna budge!! Someone will talk Trump into keeping these programs in play and to turn the other cheek. Same with Sessions. American companies don’t care if we like it or not! They’ll do what they’ve been doing for the last 15 years… turn a deaf ear and simply ignore us!!!

So disheartening reading all such negative comments. I don’t buy that;
– an employer hires a candidate who is cheaper instead of their knowledge suitable for job. If you claim that you got rejected in interview then it was due to lack of your knowledge for that position.

– in today’s market H1-b are not cheaper. Mostly in all the companies every position falls into a particular price range. If you are appropriate for that position and in that price range then you are in regardless whether you are on H1-b or citizen.

I have a different problem. I have an open developer position and every single qualified or experienced person I find, requires H1B visa. This is not an entry level position but a Sr. 10 year experience requirement. I cannot find one qualified candidate so far in 2 months. My company cannot sponsor H1B & I can’t find a right person.

I came here on H1B and now.a citizen but I couldn’t agree more on how big C exploit this visa program. Exploitation nerds to stop, not H1B.

To all my American friends, who are venting on this forum about the current H1B situation, I understand your anger and frustration. And to an extent I agree with you. I am currently on H1B visa myself and I wholeheartedly agree that H1B abuse HAS TO STOP.

That being said, I do not agree that shutting down the H1B visas all together will be the solution to this problem. My reason being 3 fold.
1. Contrary to popular belief, H1B Visas are not given JUST to the IT and Tech industry (although they are the bulk of the beneficiaries of these Visas). There are various other industries that benefit from temporary work visas such as Hardware design and engineering, Telecommunication, Construction, Medicine, Research and Development of various disciplines and so on. I am not saying that there is no American talent in these fields, but there surely is an acute shortage or skilled resources.

2. According to internet sources there are tens of millions of LEGAL non-American people in the American workforce. For argument sake, lets assume 10 million. On and average, every year, they pay $10000 in federal taxes, $4000 to Social security and medicare. That is a whopping $100B in just federal Taxes, $4B in Social security and medicare every yr!!! This is not taking into account State taxes, their spending within the American Economy which help with the growth of the country. As an example if every one of this 10Million folks spend even $1000 on Rent/Mortgage a month that adds $1B every month to US economy!! In other words, this population is helping US Economy in a small yet significant way.

3. This is the age old argument which is very true. America is the Land of Opportunities and is built with the help of immigrants at every stage through Her glorious history. Denying the current or future generation of such opportunities is not only the murder of the American Dream, which in a way is the pinnacle of human optimism, but also the cheating America out of the pride and glory of being a Country of Immigrants.

I do not in anyway wish to advocate qualified and deserving Americans from being taken for a ride. I would like for all to take a stand against H1B abuse

If you come across a consulting company that “trains and places consultants/contractors” in exchange for a cut of the “consultant’s” salary, OR promotes and distributes fake resumes with falsified experience, background or education OR uses its personal connection to ensure their consultants are hired in place of more deserving American workforce then there are things you can do to shut them down. You can report them to DoL or USCIS that will PERMANENTLY shut such entities down.

If you feel that the company that you are interviewing with or are working for is favoring foreign workforce for personal reasons or for any other reason that is not justified by their business needs then please report to DoL and USCIS.

Unfortunately if any company justifies their hirings as “cheaper labor” or outsources their work, the immigration system is not to blame. That blame rests solely on the shoulders of greedy companies and corporations.

The better option as opposed to getting rid of H1B program would be a complete reconstitution of the program so that it is fair for everyone involved.

These are purely my thoughts and not my intention to undermine anyone.

Most of the comments here are talking about the abuse of the H1B program, which I agree must be stopped because it is hurting everyone. But that does not warrant eliminating the program. I came to this country 15 years ago, completed my masters in CS, legally applied for a job and have been on H1B since then. 15 YEARS on a non-immigrant status.. WHY?? Because the legal immigration system is broken here. I am waiting in a queue just because I was born in India. Have I taken a job from a qualified American born… fuck NO. I am an expert in my field and I am contributing my fair share to the American economy. Just like the forefathers of all of the folks out here. This is a country of IMMIGRANTS… Lets not become a xenophobic society. Lets fix the system for the society as a whole to progress. Let us not slip back 50 years.

FIX H1B and the legal immigration system. Fix the higher education system. And please for fuck’s sake let’s start having a meaningful discussion instead of listening to the poison FOX news propagates.

Most of the comments here are talking about the abuse of the H1B program, which I agree must be stopped because it is hurting everyone. But that does not warrant eliminating the program. I came to this country 15 years ago, completed my masters in CS, legally applied for a job and have been on H1B since then. 15 YEARS on a non-immigrant status.. WHY?? Because the legal immigration system is broken here. I am waiting in a queue just because I was born in India. Have I taken a job from a qualified American born… fuck NO. I am an expert in my field and I am contributing my fair share to the American economy. Just like the forefathers of all of the folks out here. This is a country of IMMIGRANTS… Lets not become a xenophobic society. Lets fix the system for the society as a whole to progress. Let us not slip back 50 years.

FIX H1B and the legal immigration system. Fix the higher education system. And please let’s start having a meaningful discussion.

Only the Americans who are talentless hacks of the tech world are complaining about lack of jobs and h1bs.

H1bs are few and far betweeen and barely have any impact on the total hiring of American workers. Ask any manager at Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, EBay, Paypal and they will tell you how vital H1B immigrants from Russia, India and China are to their respective companies.

H1Bs attract the best and brightest of the worlds talents to live work and innovate in American companies. If fellow Americans don’t want to put in the hard work then tough noogies, welcome to globalization with free movement of labor, j***koffs.

I had a great time while reading comments here. Again, politicians succeeded in turning people against each other so they never notice what the real problem is. First of all, there are only 85000 h1bs issued each year, that is 7000 per month. I know there are some fraudulent IT consulting firms committing fraud in the name of h1b but as far as I have seen, h1bs go to foreign people who have graduate degrees from top US universities. If you want to kick trained foreign talent out, be my guest. Secondly, many people are talking about corporate greed. Well, if you were really serious about that, you would have bothered to educate yourselves and voted for Bernie. Instead, you put Trump in charge. Look at the cabinet picks made by Trump. Only 8 members have as much wealth as 33% of Americans put together. Now you will say, because they know how the system is broken they will fix it. It is like saying, thieves know how to steal so lets appoint bunch of thieves in a police station. Open your eyes people, have a little perspective, pick your battles wisely!

Truth is they dont have enough talent in house to support and build the technology and hence H1B… u take out European, Asians, Africans, Latin Americans from this country and u are left with nothing to run this country

This program must be ended not only because it’s not allowing experienced and qualified Americans to be hired in favor of H1B paid lower wages but because the companies that hire H1-B create a indenture servant environment. I have work for many 8A companies that hire people from India and even thought the rules state that the company must pay an equal wage that an american employee will be paid. In reality, what happens is the 8A pay H1B about 30% less and bill the government at the full billable rate. and for the companies benefit pay a lower wage. But what is worse the 8A charge the H1B a $5000 to $10000 fee to sponsor their work VISA and if they want to leave the company will then threaten them send them back to India. I have seen this happen many times and it is sad.

Do you know what the basic procedure for hiring a H1B?
First there must be no qualified american worker that can perform the job. To meet the qualifications of this rule the company must post the job position, locally and nationally. Second, If no qualified american is determined by applying for the position, then the company can file with the Department of Labor to H1B application, providing documentation that the job positions was posted locally and nationally and no qualified american’s met the job requirements and Included in the application is the information of the H1B applicant for approval, at this point the approval is granted.

What the companies knows is there is no true over site and no accountability is given to congress by DOL.

I will say this, when I worked on the H1B program at DOL and started asking questions about the process and how it is not in favor of american’s I was warned that if I continued to ask question I might not have a job. This occurred several years ago and it’s highly unlikely the process and over site has changed.

I’m praying Trump severely limits the h1b and related programs. I just graduated with a Master in Computer Scince and so many of my classmates are worried about finding jobs do to everything they’ve heard about how Americans are dis Advantage in the IT field. I looked at the link to the congressional hearing James Brown provided and the only thing I could think was Wow how could Disney be so heartless. Severval of my classmates who graduated last Spring have not been able to secure employment and the few who have are not working in the profession they spent four years learning. I hope I can secure employment in my field.

India have driven down the hourly contract rates for the last 16 years, and quite arrogant about it. They have landed management jobs and hire only Indians for openings. So, it is time to show them this is American and they have abused the system.

Last there are a lot of Indian temporary agencies, who have folks on H1B visas working for them. That is illegal. H1B visas are meant for American companies for hard to find skills!

I work in H1B visa here. I would like to add few points here. IT companies have very very huge number of offshore resources in India who do the major maintenance and support work. You guys who’re not yet working in IT field can’t imagine this. Majority of these guys work around 12 hours daily. One big team at offshore will have 1or2 onshore coordinators who supports during US day time and coordinates with client who mostly is American. These onshore people would have worked in India with this team and knows the applications and will manage the team in a better way than a fresh American employee will do. So the client will prefer an Indian in that position who can work in flexible times at a cheaper rate. Americans at my office leave the office at 4 PM and take vacation for silly reasons. If you look for IT jobs you can see lot of openings asking for citizens only. If you cant find a job don’t blame H1B people who can maximum stay for 6 years that too with tiresome visa renewals and other process stuff.

All the Americans, please think twice before calling yourself Americans, if I know the history correctly your great great grandfather immigrated to this country and today no one even knows where the Real Americans are!!!

The H1B implementation undercuts the American people. Just check the unemployment data, or the American Universities, and you will find plenty of “STEM” candidates. If these companies need a specific skill (i.e Oracle, Microsoft Certification, etc.), then allow American students to obtain the pirated software found on any street corner,online, in India (or download within communist China).

What these American college students will face is either an Indian born Manager who will favor Indian national to replace an American in the USA. They will force them to go to field service, sales, or marketing at best.

Now, how would the people in India like it if 90% of their tech companies replaced them with foreign workers (from Pakistan, China, Russia, Poland, etc.)?

Lastly, there has been plenty of innovation (internet, moon landing, cell phones, Apple pc, ect.) prior to Microsoft’s lobby for the H1B program in the 90’s.

Lets look at the numbers: there were 223,000 open software developer jobs in June (source: http://www.inc.com/salvador-rodriguez/act-software-developers-map.html) and there can only be total 85,000 possible H1B applicants per year. Lets say all 85,000 applicants are software developers (I’m not counting other IT jobs like system admins, DB admins, analysts, etc) then deducting that number from 223,000 still gives us 138,000 open positions just for software development. There is a huge skill gap that H1B program is helping fill and helping America keep its edge. Please get your facts right.

A lot of H1Bser’s on here defending a program that should have never been created in the first place. Most are from 3rd world cesspools and have no qualms about coming over here to take American jobs, get insulted when you mention how crappy their country is, yet wont lift a finger to try to make conditions better in their own native country. Truly the definition of cowards and opportunists.

There is some truth on all sides of this. And some outright fabrications. I find the h-1b visa holders I work with professional and eager to learn. I admire them for the spirit it takes to leave home and family for a strange country. It is the American immigrant story. And, they have no part in the fraudulent practices of the body shops that bring them in.
On the other side there is outright fraud in how the program is used. Disney brought this to every ones attention but most large corporations are doing the same thing but through attrition. If you go into an IT shop at a large corporation you see People 45 and up and a large contingent of younger H-1B worker from an Indian body shops.
They are not hired directly because then the company, like Disney, would have to show they could not find workers while in reality they were dumping them.
I say there is a place for this but it should be though through without greed and fraud on the part of the body shop companies and without the rancor of Americans.

I train 4 Americans in current job with only one of them with a degree, don’t know how to write simple scripts. They are above my pay grade and senior developers. they are so arrogant while asking for help! as if i am doing them a favor. These Developers cannot write simple SQL scripts (forget about algorithms) has never heard of a union or distinct! And can’t even think talking about Object oriented programming with them!

I’m an Indian. I for sure can say I would not have replaced any citizen with the same technical expertise as mine. But can any one be trained for that Job is the question to be answer. Most corporations don’t have any proper training to get an intern to the real work. They don’t even have 5% Training Infra structure required to get an Intern into real word.

If USA is to achieve some respectability in the job market, please kick the Indians out and stop them from sneaking in. This is becoming like a pest-invasion and is definitely going to escalate!! End the stupid scam H1B. There are plenty of US graduates who are far far superior to Indian graduates and more hardworking and pleasant. Down with the S-C-A-M: H-1B. It is 100% Bullshit. Major and only source of Immigration fraud as is marriage to US citizens!!!! STOP bastardizing and ruining USA. Once again STOP H-1B scams; do away with that visa totally.

I am surprised by the hostility on this website, especially when it comes from people like Paul Art who was sponsored under the H1B program.

My experience has been quite different. Being domestic helped me get hired because my employer didn’t have to worried about my status. In fact, the data science team I am on only has 4 international workers out of 11. Remember that in 2015 alone, we gained 200,000 workers in tech, so at most 32.5% of them could be H1B if all the 65,000 granted petitions were from tech (in reality they get split into different industries). So I really don’t think they are the main reason american graduates cannot find a job.

Also we recently interviewed someone and we were told that we cannot discuss his visa status at any time of the interview. The fact that we have the sole power to determine whether he gets hired is a sign that H1B would in no way sway our decision.

What worries me is not just this largely unjustified hostility, but also how ignorant people can be. Tossing out H1B workers doesn’t necessarily mean American workers will get these jobs. A lot of companies will die which means the market will shrink. So it is possible that we won’t even see the 77.5% of the 200,000 going to americans…

I am a data scientist with 12 years of experience,I am on h1b and I work in Maine and below are my skills,
Hadoop(have worked with almost everything on the Hadoop platform ),Spark,Java,Phython,Dotnet,C,C++
SQL,DB2,Oracle,Teradata,I am an AWS certified developer and I have experience with SAP implementations for procurement (ECC and Ariba mostly). I went through 6 technical rounds before I was hired, the my colleagues who are US employees got in with just a single round of interview ,some of them are fresh out of college and I am in charge of training them which is in addition to my regular work, and I am responsible for all the mistakes they make, which could cost considerabe money if they mess up since we are using Amazon EC2 scheduler for some of the tasks and they automatically create snapshots of EBS volumes…if I have to go back I am sure all the 6 US employees in my team would be fired unless they can get a person with my skill set to replace me who can learn the company’s business quickly and give forecasts and financial reports which impact the sales prices and help my team learn and contribute.

H1B absolutely must be trashed. All the indians MUST be send to where they come from. We gave away over 7 million jobs to indians who don’t share our values, don’t care about our traditions,customs or believes.The only reason they here is to rip financial benefits on the backs of the middle class Americans. On top of all that they call us “stupid”…..you should send all of these arrogant stinky pricks back to their shitty home.

I am fully agreed about H1-B visa program it is totally injustice to unemployed domestic workers transfer money and skill overseas and they lobby for political influence. Need to be better and cheap education for tech industry and students in high school, cheap and affordable college for everyone, set the standard to recruited foreign workers, pay higher Texas if they don’t follow the rules. But all this on fairly and transparent manner. Every country have a right to support there workers

international came here after spending alot of money.but these h1b people they just came up with small money and they gain a lot i hope trump will stop this thing graduates can do the work waht the h1b guys are doing now not a big deal give us a chance . companies are asking only h1b people ………….

It is really disappointing to read anti H1B comments and I find attitude of American losers laughable. Yes, losers, that’s what I consider you guys who are complaining here and asking government intervention. I cannot believe that you guys are allowed to be called as an American. Go and read some history and you will find out what it means to be a real American. You losers are crying and complaining about a third world race, who comes to this country and takes your job. You guys should be stripped from your citizenship and send back to wherever your asylum seeker forefathers came from.

Now about IT jobs, first of all if anyone is unable to get a job in IT, it means they are not able to pass technical interview. Plain and simple. You are asked series of questions and you should able to answer them. If you are able to answer them, no one will reject you. Right now dice.com have thousands of jobs only for US citizen, people who are complaining here should try to get one of those jobs. But you won’t because you will not able to pass interview. You would rather prefer complaining and thrash talking.

I have seen many candidates they get offended when they are asked basic questions in the interview and not able to answer and then complain about interview process. Luckily in my company they record everything and they have not found a single incident where person who was technically qualified was rejected. That just does not happen.

Other thing that you losers also have to understand that all these major outsourcing companies are listed on stock market, and own by same people who owns corporations that cut overpaid, entitled people from workforce. Do not expect Trump to do anything for you but I am definitely getting my tax break!!!

And BTW to Indian H1B holders – you guys needs to become American as fast as possible and stop stinking in the office. Use some body wash if you are not using it and stop bringing that bullshit pickle and sambar to office.

I agree the abuse of h1b and for spouses should be stopped. I work for a fortune 100 company and we have so many housewives working as testers who lie in their resume and are not at all efficient in what they do

I worked in the Silicon Valley for over 2 decades starting in the 80s. I was in management, so privy to the discussions over hiring. The only reason we hired any people from India or Pakistan was to get software engineers at a lower pay rate than if we hired Americans. We did have a 2 genius type Europeans (German) who were hired based strictly on their talent.
Also, as a Field Service Engineer I saw over time that when I went to service our clients (other tech companies), their engineering labs became 100% Indian, from the tech bench up to the top manager. It seemed very racist to me. We all know by now that non-Anglos have no problem practicing tribalism in their hiring practices. Yahoo in Burbank is 80% newly arrived Asians. It’s not believable that they couldn’t find anyone of other races to do the jobs there. So yes, Yahoo has racist hiring practices like many other companies I’ve visited.
As such, the HB1 Visa system should be shut down about 90%, and let the chips fall where they may.

I think Trump should stop H1B visa immediately because I believe H1B visa hurt the US economy more than helping the country. I am a US citizen with over 15 years of experience in EPC and oil and gas companies and have no job, meanwhile you walk through the many engineering companies almost half of their employee is H1B visa. If someone told you the H1B visa make less don’t believe this at all, because i seen it many times not only they doesn’t get less infect they get the same amount of money as US citizen. It does hurt me a lot when I see many of my co-worker including me have no job meanwhile the H1B visa have a job. Also when H1B visa they get the job they never leave the country and they find the way to stay. I believe Trump should step this as quick as possible.

I think Trump should stop the H1B visa immediately because I believe this type of visa those more harm than help the US economy. I am a US citizen with over 15 years of experience in engineering firm and have no job, meanwhile you go to the many engineering firm half of their employee is H1B visa. Well don’t believe this at all if someone told you H1B visa get less salary because I seen it many times not only they does not get less infect they get the same amount of salary as US citizen. It does hurt me a lot when I see H1B visa have a job meanwhile I or many of my co-workers have no job. I hope Trump stop this very soon.

Please forward to Donald Trump and let him tweet about this message. I will show proofs for him.

Yes, Indian Companies train mediocre graduates, send them to USA faking resumes, place them in companies for less, so American graduates are not employed.

In my work place, a state government (funded by federal dollars ) employs Indian graduates, a american graduate is not given any chance (but he pays taxes). It is so pathetic these indians fill 60% of the IT jobs. I don’t see any american born graduates in my team nor my department. It is all funded by tax dollars. I can only respect 1 or 2 of these because they are very talented, the rest faked their resumes.

How does the management of tax payers funded State government employ so many H1Bs ? It is beyond my imagination.

Both parties failed American students. They should be kicked out first, then H1Bs , not the other way around.

In my state government, I see this trend ( in the last 10-12 years) emplying H1Bs, putting american graduates on the streets with a debt of 100K. It is so pathetic.

I am an Indian living in India . So please I am not competing for space in your country ,
Just a little taken aback at so much hatred In today’s day and age when you hear of Doctors Without Borders , Berlin Wall coming down ..it just smacks of small mindedness to hear people talk about someone taking their jobs and believing it’s all because of another person who definitely is not capable but available as a cheaper alternative . As many in this forum have pointed out nobody wants an inept team which produces substandard work . So no company least of all companies like Microsoft will have a CEO Satya Nadella , and he will hire Indians because of cost cutting or due to same skin color .
I have visited USA very often , admired the culture , the openness , the cleanliness , and wanted India as a country to emulate . I am not ashamed of being in the third world , same as you should not be proud of being in the first world . It’s just a quirk of Birth.Some 100 years back India was the golden bird today it is Usa . Who knows what tomorrow brings
Please look inwards to find the reason and not blame so called outsiders .
Just because one speak English with an American accent does not make one a better and more qualified worker . Really you do not do better programming because you call it the bathroom , a washroom or restroom . Ultimately the job being done in all three is the same 😊

What the hell, USA is made of all immigrants. What do you mean by proper Americans? America is made by immigrants. Then why are you guys complaining about immigrants now. We thought america is a great country. We came here to pursue our dreams. Please stop insulting immigrants

PBKG – addressed to you.
Nobody is insulting immigrants. People like you take words out of context because they have nothing better to do but just to start arguments for the sake of it.
Get busy with the life.

Well, after reading all such comments I can understand how much hatred you all guys have got in you.
USA is a country made up of all immigrants and I would say majority of its economy run on that basis too.
Every country practically depends on other country be it a developed or developing country. First of all USA charges very high fees for applying on this visa if this is scrapped then the regular income through visa would be affected. If Indian or any other foreign students don’t come here to get higher studies then there would not be any income via institutions. Make a note of this that Foreign students are charged more than regular American students .
H1-B workers pay tax to USA they don’t stay here for free. Those are skilled workers and already gone through alot of screening to get this visa.
The way outsourcing is helping Indian or any Asian economy similarly USA is actually getting its own source of income through these immigrants too.
Its a give and take business USA cant just scrap everyone out and spread hatred with everyone.
I personally have seen people coming on work visa work for 24*7 on a support role however American people don’t want such roles and aren’t comfortable with such hard work. They usually prefer 9-5 job role.
No community is good or bad its just about perception. The way someone said above that Asians favor Asians however actually Even i have seen many a times American person gets hired or is short listed just because he doesn’t belong to USA although he has all required skill sets and work permit. So its all about perception and we cannot change human tendency.
We all are part of one world just stay calm , get educated , get placed through campus rounds and get on a job rather than just cribbing about not getting the jobs.

Absolutely Restrict H1B visas, I am an American tech employee whom worked for the same company for 20 yrs and was outsourced by cheap labor from India where they can get a university degree in less than a year.. Paid for by the Companies in India to have additional H1B billable bodies for American Corporations. Also as 1st generation Indian workers move into hiring positions, They only Hire Indian workers in American Owned Companies. We should also put some type of tariff/tax on work performed oversees for American companies. I spent many hours on the phone before being laid off teaching Indian developers how to “basically “How to Develop.

@ G shools – I couldn’t stop myself replying from seeing such a ignorant comment. H1B requirement states – “The person must hold a U.S. equivalent 4 years bachelor’s or higher degree from an accredited college or university” . There is no university which provide degree within a year. And for applying for H1B our education background is verified by independent party and submitted to USCIS. We pay SSN and all the necessary tax which we are getting benefits. We don’t stay so long to get benefit out of it. Government doesn’t pay us unemployment benefits or any other benefits. In 20 years would it be fair to say lot of technologies got changed and your skillset is no longer relevant and the company is moving in different direction that needs different skillset? You would have trained what the business is but not exactly how to develop, both are 2 different things.

Well I feel I actually have experience regarding this issue as I posted earlier about a scam Indian consultancy where the Indians not only faked their years of experience, but also the schools and degrees they went to and obtained. I witnessed firsthand these Indian liars operate, as well as the lack of remorse/guilt they have for being dishonest. They even disclosed how bad the schools in India were with lackluster curriculum and rampant cheating. If you really believe that most Indians on H1B are honest in their applications and resumes they submit, you’re incredibly naive and not educated on the con job they practice. I was there at the Indian scam consultancy “Perfict Global” in Concord, CA (go look them up), so I know the game and how it’s played.

It’s not about perception, it’s about unemployed skilled America’s who cannot start their career in tech or who have been pushed out of tech by greedy corporations and foreign workers. How these myoptic tech companies did not see the day American citizens got tired of being sh@ted on is beyond me.

H1-B rackets in USA is no less tan cancer for young American graduates. Most H1-Bs get the job in USA because the hiring manager was once H1-B, and knows how to control them and to secure his/her own job. Most H1-Bs carry fake degree from Madras University. They barely speak proper English. They have $0 student loan to pay. They live together in 12×12 room with $200 monthly shared cost including utilities. Most are looking for to get green card, and do not like who already have green card. They can take just about anything as a salary allowed by H1-B laws.

Now what Mr. President Trump did was “show me what you’ve got, and if you have guts then get here on H1-B and make $130k per year”. Now the reality is 99% of H1-Bs will fall off and will require to go back home. They absolutely hold no water to get $130k year offer.

Here is the kicker. Most H1-B brings their spouse in USA. From day one they attempt to produce anchor baby.

I think immigration is a necessary opportunity for all countries including USA. I am one of those foreign workers and my salary is probably less than a resident, proud of my technical skills. citizens with issues to find jobs after degree cannot blame foreign. Is their own experience who plays an important role. My advice: don’t wait until finish your degree to find jobs, companies don’t want oldest guys with 0 experience. They want workers ready to deliver. Make your own endeavour. Try to sale your best product: you and will find jobs demonstrating a couple jobs and years of experience

who are native american? Can we kick out all people who took green cards and citizenship on work visa including our fathers and grandfather?
……………………………..H1B requirements ………………………..
One of the basic requirement for H1B is the education. To qualify for the H-1B visa category, the prospective H-1B employee must hold a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree, or the equivalent. The person must hold a U.S. equivalent 4 years bachelor’s or higher degree from an accredited college or university. If the foreign degree is 3 years bachelor’s degree , a 3 years of work experience in same or similar field /occupation can be considered to one year additional education.

do you know that before granting visa US consulates receive education equivalency records , which indicates what a 4 yr degree in US is equals to what in that foreign country. and 90% of us who enter would have have had 4 yrs degree + min 5 yrs experience(non burger flipping ).

These companies provide and brings mostly H1 visa candidates from India. These companies’ takes interviews US residents and Citizens but they select H1-b and L1 and L1 Indian candidate for the job.

These companies bribe the management and higher chain of US companies and place their candidate for IT jobs. In these companies, US citizens are fired and hired H1-b and L1 Indian candidates by these US companies and files for Green card as well. This is a big deficit for US green card holder and US citizens. Moreover, these jobs are offshored in India.

Indians who are green card holder and US citizen, they have supported trump and happy about Trump’s plan to avoid H1-b and L1 visas. Also H1-b and L1 visa holder’s spouse are getting work permits in US and they are engaged in mostly in IT field which hampers two US citizen’s jobs taken by each Indian H1-b and L1 visa holder’s family.

Most of the US citizens who are engaged in IT fields are buried with financial aid with no jobs.
Indian IT H1-b and L1 visa so called “Skilled talents”, they also get experience after working in US jobs. They are not genius from the initial point. ONLY THE
ADVANTAGE INDIAN CITIZENS THEY HAVE IN US IT JOBS IS THEY HAVE THEIR BIG COMMUNITY. Their community at work always neglects and supports them.

Apart from these issues, every single India’s H1-b and L1’s salary is getting paid out of the US CITIZEN’S pocket.

Top US companies like Google, Cisco, Disney, Amazon, Microsoft, Comcast, Apple, IBM, Capital One, Bank of America and more US companies have these Indian IT companies as a prime vendors. Even sad part is company like NASA has TCS as a prime vendor.

US CITIZENS DO NOT NEED INDIAN IT SUPPORT. USA HAS VERY EXCILLENT COLLEGES IN US AND HAS THEIR OWN CITIZENS WHO CAN WORK IN IT SECTORS IN USA. IF TRUMP DOES NOT COME WITH THIS H1-B AND L1 SOLUTION, IT’S NOT RECOMMENDED FOR US CITIZENS TO STUDY COMPUTER MAJOR TO GET “IT JOBS”.

PRESSIDENT TRUMP, US CITIZENS SERIOUSLY NEED YOUR HELP TO ABOLISH H1-B AND L1 visa program, H1-b and L1’s spouse work permit, offshored jobs in IT and India owned all prime vendors bribe US Companies to place their H1-b and L1 candidates in US TECH jobs. In each US IT jobs, these Indian owned prime vendors have a huge competition to bribe the top management of US companies in order to be a prime vendors for their Indian H1-b and L1 workers.

If TRUMP really want to generate and stabilize US Citizen’s jobs Trump should filter further criteria for H1-b and L1 visa holder that they have to return back to their country after 3 years and not allowed to file US Green card, void all pending green card applications for H1-b and L1 applicant and should take action against these bribery to these both parties (US Companies management and Indian IT prime vendors).

PLEASE HELP US CITIZEN’S JOB TRADED BY BAD POLITICS AND INDIAN IT COMPANIES.

Many people, especially American friends, venting their frustration against H1B shows how ill-informed they are. And, few claim they have PhDs. You people are seeing only a dark spot in the H1B visa system. Your knowledge about H1B is convoluted. Get clear.

I am an international student, who got PhD in Analytical Chemistry from a top tier university here, and want to share other facets of H1B. Based upon my knowledge and experience. Of course, I am on H1B. I concur to the fact that H1B visas are misused by many IT consultancies. But, that is just a blemish.

What is H1B?
H1B, and OPT prior to that, is a lollipop USA uses to lure best and the brightest of other countries. Top cream, if you will. Every year, USCIS grants 85K H1B visas: 65K for international undergrads and another 20K for MS and PHDs holding foreign American graduates. Most of the misuses consultancies do with the former category.

American universities generate both brain and buck from international students flashing scanty yet hard-to-get H1B. In terms of fees and tuition, an international undergraduate pays around three times an American student does. They mostly come in STEM programs with rigorous tests and strict visa application processes. In graduate programs, USA only lets enter the bests to work in their gov/industry founded advanced R&D programs. I am not lying, without international students STEM graduate programs in most of the American Universities defunct. If those people migrate to some other country, what they will do in the future, for sure, seeing how intolerant “Americans” are growing, American technology sector will be of 2nd tier. May be like of Spain or Denmark. Don’t get me wrong.

Let me share facts.

American universities lure best brains around the world and makes 32 Billion dollars per year from them. In return, they let only few of them work for few years. And not to all. Even after that, getting a job is really hard as most of companies, if not all, are reluctant/ unwilling to sponsor H1B. The irony is Australia and Canada get 2nd tier of foreign talents, charge less money and grant automatic PR after the end of the academic program. They can go for any job, there is no partial treatment like here in the USA. Getting H1B is like being a slave to the employer. You cannot switch your employer unless your future employer concurs to sponsor you. In most of the cases, they don’t.

I am working in a mid size oil company as a research scientist and make 85K. Pay 23% fed tax. Many American high schoolers make around 120K in the same company. The work they do require no advanced knowledge, yet the one I do does. I am an expert in my area. There was a opening in an oil giant in my research field. I applied. So did one of my colleagues, he was my lab mate in grad school too, with different research background though. His compatibly was about 25% for the job and mine more than 90%. He landed the job and they did not even phone-interview me. Reason, he is a white American, I am a foreigner in H1B. So how does a H1B steal your American job? It’s laughable.

America does not have a flexible/mild immigration policy. Be assured. She lures the bests from around the world, who are way better academically than American students, and loiters them around in visa status like H1B. In my 5 years of school, I have seen, in most of the classes, the international students, especially asians, like Indian, Chinese, Nepali, SLankan, Japanese etc., top and outperform their fellow American counterparts. But, when it comes to landing a job, the story is different. All the better paying jobs are for Americans. And some still complain.

Most of my compatriots here in the USA are working as post-docs in universities for merely 35K a year, being a PhD. Will any American want to work like that? Nope. And, I have not seen many American students working hard. I am pointing out the fact. No offense intended. In grad school, we, international students, the future H1Bs, used to work more than 12 hours a day, everyday, including holidays and weekends, even in summers. Do Americans work like that? Nope. If I were an American, I would be grateful to foreigner in H1B with American advanced STEM degrees. Won’t talk about shunning them.

Let me tell you another story. People who are saying H1B steals American jobs, FYI, the American whites are the most privileged human species on earth. Not only in USA. Whole world. There are hundreds of thousands of American workers working and enjoying tax-free money in asian countries. What is that? Do you have a say about that? You can easily get a job anywhere in the world, let alone USA. Even after that, if you still complain, you really lack something.

All those highly qualified international talents in H1B are not only the ones that suffer because of American policy. Even US citizen kids of asian immigrants suffer hugely. When it comes to entry in the college, mainly Ivy leagues, they compete with other asian applicants from outside. What unfair! They don’t compete with white American kids. Their opportunities are untouched. And, still you complain. Imagine, there was a free competition, how many white kids how many asian kids would be in those colleges?

Another thing, whites can go anywhere and do whatever they want. They exploited whole Asia and Africa for centuries. And, they are still doing the same to South America, Australia, and North America. They migrated en mass, looted, massacred the entire population but that is not unfair. But, it is unfair, when few people from their “colonies” come to their “homelands”. At least we came with some merit and brought our skill, knowledge, and hard-work. Unlike “Americans” , who came blazing guns.

I apologize, my rants may not be the most of the coherent/organized ones. I just vented the frustration being in H1B. I believe, US benefits more from H1B than it pays back. Rest, everyone thinks from his/her capacity.

Category A: (Indian Students Converts)
(i) Students who go to legit BIG NAME colleges and get legit education. -> (less than 1%) Get hired on H1B directly by firms whom THEY ARE WORKING FOR.

(ii) Students who go legit “STATE UNIVERSITIES” and get legit education. Graduate and have about 2 years OPT VISA to work. They join small companies “CONSULTANICIES” (Go on Sulekha.com OR type “FREE IT Training and Placements” on google~1000s of companies like this will pop-up). These so called consultancies provide so-called training. Training is about showing you what the interface looks like and faking experience. After 2-3 months, these companies begin to market you. They show experience from 5-12 years on your resume. So you go and work as a “CONTRACTOR” and hence no background check. You go and work for a company like IBM, Accenture, Microsoft Deloitte or even government Dept. like “Department of Labor”, WHO have sub-contracted the work to indian companies like “Infosys”, “Tech Mahindra”, Cognizant Solutions, Wipro and Satyam Computers, TATA Consultancy. The jobs-contracts last from 2 months-5 years (depends how lucky you get). Once hired-after weeks or months, coworkers/bosses can tell that you faked experience but it is almost impossible to fire due to corporate hierarchy and politics. After Serving on few contracts like these, The fake candidate becomes real candidate with experience. Also to mention, It is interesting to know that phone interviews are taken by some other person, by using call-forwarding feature on applicant’s phone. Skype-Interviews are also faked by someone else speaking while the job-applicant simply pretends to talk.

(iii) People who go to fake universities to keep their OPT work permits active or even compete for H1b. Universities who lack affiliation with the department of education, like – University of North America and University of Northern Virginia.

Category B: Experienced professional from India. Like a .net senior developer or architech who makes 120K in U.S., comes from India on H1 & L1 to get paid 60K or 70K.

The current H1/OPT/L1 program is not attracting the smartest talent but the most crooked talent….suffocating not only fresh college graduates but even experienced technology professionals who have followed the righteous path throughout their life….by working in retail stores and going to college by taking federal loans. We are not bringing Einsteins and Bose in the country….but IT slaves who can work for their slave-masters for minimal wages while killing JOBS FOR FELLOW AMERICANS….and providing no incentives for the youth of this country to become Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. “Former International Student from India” Now a fellow American by following the righteous path!!

A great majority of the H1B, H4, OPT, EAD and L1 visas go to a handful of Indian IT scammers – TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, HCL among others. They make it a point NOT to hire any local US citizens, in clear violation of EEOC. How this is done is rather easy. Worse yet, the indian cos. mostly hire desperate ill-qualified recent graduates from the worst colleges in India, only to unleash them on unsuspecting US companies. Twenty years ago, Telgu-speaking people from the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh were spreading like a virus in the US. They would start sham companies, forge visas to get their own family and friends over, fake their resumes, generally lie about everything, even to the extent of defrauding the IRS. Today, the situation is so much worse than one can imagine – there are an estimated 2 million of these slumdogs proliferating like a cancer on the US workforce. The incident in Kansas will hardly make a dent in their deadly game to completely destroy American companies, forcibly takeover and fill them up with more of their own coolies.

I agree with stopping H1 and L1 visas immediately regardless of Indians are trying to prove. So far, we have not seen anything done by Trump regarding this urgent issue. I wrote the president a letter about this and I hope everyone else does the same! Thanks!

As a H1B holder, I am fine if they make it merit-based. I have done recruiting on different Universities, as well as worked as a developer in numerous languages and technologies, and a lot of recent computer science and MIS graduates can’t program creatively. Between the “over-achievers” who sport a perfect GPA, but can’t solve complex problems without direction, and the “homeboys” who won’t just won’t move and demand to stay local (unlike any H1B), removing the program entirely would cripple the industry.

Yes, you can give me all the case-by-case scenarios you want, but reality is that, as a population, a lot of american graduates are severely lacking compared to what’s available overseas. Computer Science is a tough field, and you got to understand that to succeed, you have to compete with people that have studied harder, for longer, while likely having to work in poorer conditions than your regular CS american student. Hardship nurtures greatness – embrace it.

What is the matter with us? I just watched 60 Minutes on the H1B visas. Should infuriate all of us-Democrats and Republicans alike. Why don’t we send these companies a message. Let’s start by boycotting Disney until they bring back the workers they fired and replaced with H1B workers. It’s corporate greed thats bringing down this country, not liberalism or conservatism.

It’s not just IT and software engineer departments that are being hollowed out with these parasites; whole Accounting departments are being replaced in the same way. Where will it stop? When entire companies have all Indian employees?

I am fully in favor of him ending this! It is nearly impossible to find a good job because of it. One person mentioned that companies should be taxed more if they higher an H1B worker-When actually, businesses were given a tax break (Not having to pay SS tax) on any of them-Passed by 65 senate people-Look it up (Or ask any good College entrance person)-I’m shocked at how many people are so unaware of this. Also, I am in IT Project Management-The H1B people are making 100k no problem-So, it isn’t that they are paying them less!

first why projects are outsourced to india, since lack of skill. and if they are capable of recruiting local people for the same skill then there is no need of outsourcing to indiaa. so defenitly we can stop H1 completely, if the work needs to be addressed immeidietly then H1 is processed. if you guys are really capable of doing the work with local persons then stop outosourcing and do it with local peoples, we will find some work from our local areas . how many agred with this point ??

I am American born, and have worked in IT as a programmer for 20 years. I saw most of my colleagues gradually being phased out and replaced by H1B (ie. Indians). The main problem is incompetent management who cannot stand to be questioned. H1Bs will do whatever they are told as not to hurt the ego of their manager. Some of these managers are American born, or naturalized citizens, many of them came as immigrants themselves and speak English as a second language or do not understand technology very well. Added once you bring an H1B, they are the preferred employee for said reasons. This is the root of the problem, incompetent and weak American management.